Comment to 'When did the Sabbath change to Sunday?'
Comment to When did the Sabbath change to Sunday?

  • Hey brother, thank you for this keen reply. You have given us much to consider.

    I had been thinking lately about the very text you mentioned. And how I might implement the reality of this special day being appointed for our BENEFIT.

    The Almighty seems to be very jealous of this day:

    13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:

    Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.  

    Isaiah 58:13-14

    Growing up, I recall a Seventh Day church allow a First Day church to use its building. The Sunday Church was in the startup mode, I remember. The location was not far from our home.

    My parents were from a world where stores were closed on Sunday. We did not watch TV unless it was a "nature" program. But we were OK with it and found much else to do.

    Folks can become legalistic about anything. Yet there is something here I feel I might be missing. I like to think that everyday is special in its own way. And every act is to be an act of worship.

    Perhaps I need to take this more seriously and learn more about it. And appreciate REST more than I do. And to appreciate the rhythm of life that God has appointed through a once a week "retreat".

    We often overlook the other part of the sabbath mandate: Six days you should labor. Today, some will not start. Others will not stop.

    • T

      I first read your response shortly after you posted it. The Isaiah passage caught my eye and I wanted to reflect on it a bit before responding. I must confess that I'm struggling a bit to put this passage into context. The way that it's translated in your post above, as well as in the ESV, the words "finding thine own pleasure" seem to stand out. On the face of it, it would seem that God is saying that fun and the Sabbath are mutually exclusive. And I know many Christians also feel exactly this way. Just recently I saw a picture of a sign at a Christian recreational facility asking people to refrain from using the ballfields on Sunday. This too is the world that I grew up in.

      Digging further into the Isaiah passage, the footnotes in the ESV say that the word "pleasure" can also be translated as "business". But business is such a broad term that it's tough to think of it exclusively as the work that we do to get paid. Perhaps something can be gleaned from the same chapter, verse 3b, "Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.". In the verses leading up to those you cited, it feels as though there is a connection between a day of fasting and the Sabbath. Or maybe I'm just reading something that is not there.